With that in mind, I’ve been going through the pile ‘o metal and resin to see what needs to be done.

One little fella who’s been appropriately lurking in the shadows of the paintstation is Gollum, from GW’s Lord of the Rings range.

Figuring he’d be a quick project I grabbed him and slapped some paint on him for fun – finishing him in an afternoon. Well I tell a lie, the base took a little while to do, waiting days for the resin to cure, etc. More on that later.

Amazingly he’s not actually a mini of mine. Mrs Von Deadlock has a love of the schitzophrenic ring-obsessive and had him sat in her toy collection with a rudimentary basecoat on him. Not by her hand, I hasten to add. She’s never shown any inclination to pick up the brush!

So anyway, some time back I declared that one day I’d paint him up and it was about time I made good on that promise.

For his base, I decided to do a simple clear resin water effect around the rock and set about replicating the effect I had previously used on my Kingdom Death Preacher.

It wasn’t without struggles.

I use a product from Gedeo called Crystal Resin, which is a two-part job that’s relatively low effort. No having to boil stuff up in a saucepan, and so on. Simply mix two-parts resin with one-part hardener in a disposable cup and pour it into the “mold”. In this case, the mold is a strip of acetate tightly sellotaped around Gollum’s base to stop it dribbling everywhere.

In order to help seal the mold, and to assist removing the acetate surround, I smeared the inside with vaseline before taping it up.

Problem number one: tinting the resin.

To represent the transparency/colour of pond water at a reduced scale I knew I wanted to tint it and to do that I’ve found that inks do the trick. Unfortunately it seems that some inks work and others don’t. I have some Windsor & Newton inks which have an unfortunate habit of turning to flecks in the resin, no matter how much it is mixed. Probably a solvent issue. An old pot of Miniature Paints ink dissolved nicely though.

So in the end I was left with a murky green-brown colour with tiny dark flecks in it. As it turns out this isn’t such a big deal for a dirty pond/river, I figure. So I just went ahead and poured it in. Something to look out for if you’re after a totally clear effect though.

Using a plastic teaspoon I carefully drizzled the resin mix around the rock base and then left it, covered by tupperware to deter dust, for a couple of days. Curing time is supposedly 24 hours on this stuff but I gave it a second day to be safe.

Then came problem number two: the miniscus effect.

This was expected as I’d seen it happen on the Kingdom Death mini. Basically, the resin is viscous stuff and has such a surface tension that it curves up around the edges, and also has a habit of creeping its way up textured surfaces to some extent.

I don’t think it was so noticable on the Kingdom Death mini but here I wanted the water at the base edge to be perfectly flat. So I mustered up the courage and got some wet/dry sandpaper to it. Trouble is, how can I get it back to that lovely shiny transparent finish?

After a bit of Googlage and a few abortive attempts with my cheap Dremel knockoff I came up with a fairly acceptable result. I simply sanded it with the wet paper and then laid down a coat of gloss varnish. Topping that off with a coat of Klear floor polish.

I’m not entirely satisfied with the result as there’s still a bit of a dip in the resin that is particularly obvious in photos. So I think I will go back in with the sandpaper again, and also I think I’ll spend a bit more time polishing up the finish afterward.

As for Gollum himself, there are a few bits on him that should have been dealt with at the prep stage, but I was feeling lazy and I confess that I couldn’t be bothered to entirely strip him down.

I may re-paint his eyes, come to think of it. I could do with making them a bit less squinty.

Overall, though, I’m pretty happy with him considering how little time he took. Hope the Lady likes him.

Seeing those nicely painted miniatures brought to life against the backdrop of some interesting terrain is one of the main draws of the hobby. This year I spent plenty of time drifting from table to table, taking snapshots of those that impressed me most.

So without further ado let me present to you a handful of my picks from the crop of Salute 2012 demo tables.

First up is a three part table for the 15mm sci-fi game Gruntz. I was taken by this table because it was such a nice way to present different aspects of the game.

I think for demo purposes a small 2′x2′ terrain setup with a handful of miniatures is a great way to go, and here they had three such tables – including a nice interior “bug hunt” scenario in the foreground.

It must have been cool to play through some linked scenarios on those boards.

Well done guys. I’ve never really been taken by the 10-15mm scale sci-fi stuff but this, along with an impressive stand for new game Dropzone Commander, has rather tickled my fancybone.

One thing you can count on is that the Freebooter’s Fate team will put together a splendid demo table for their pirate skirmish game and this year they didn’t disappoint. A nice island/swamp affair with connected walkways which would have been great fun to demo on, I’m sure.

I think the raised solid wooden frame adds a real touch of class and I can imagine it’s very satisfying to clatter the dice in there – casino style – without fear of them scattering off the table edge.

Steampunk has been a la mode in the hobby this past few years and there was plenty of brass goggles stuff on display at Salute this year.

West Wind have a new offering called Empire of the Dead, and Micro Art Studios were demoing a beta version of Wolsung.

Both looked great, but I think Wolsung edged it for me with the slightly nicer minis and a touch of the exotic about it. Possibly due to Micro Arts being a Polish company.

Many of the demo tables made good use of laser-cut MDF terrain buildings. This has been something of a recent revolution in terrain manufacture and you’re seeing more and more suppliers get on board with the process.

Companies like Sarissa Precision and Gamecraft to name but a couple are putting out some impressive product, with many demo tables being accompanied by the telltale and not unpleasant aroma of burnt wood!

Sarissa’s System Infinity range, for example, is perfectly suited to the (not so coincidentally named) Infinity skirmish game by Corvus Belli.

I must say that I tend to be drawn more to the small skirmish demo tables and, though I can appreciate grandeur of a billiard table sized Napoleonic conflict in 20mm scale, it doesn’t really grab me.

That said, there were plenty of impressive offerings and I did enjoy seeing the giant 20th century battlefields.

The level of detail can be staggering, really inviting the viewer to peer in close and marvel at the effort put in by its creators.

I’ll leave you with a few such epic battlefields and encourage you to click through to the bigger versions so you can enjoy the detail. Well, whatever you can make out from my fuzzy photography at least!

Long story short, my Hasslefree Miniatures Space Bulldog placed first in the sci-fi single miniatures category!

Without further ado, here’s the fully painted version as he left the paintstation at 10:30pm on Friday night. (Which, incidentally, was a significant improvement on last year’s 3am panic)

I had so much fun painting him and constructing that base. I’d say he’s influenced in no small part by the amount of Mass Effect I’ve been playing lately.

The corridor section is probably a little too weathered to match the clean Syd Mead-esque design of the awesome computer game, but it definitely inspired me to use plenty of 45 degree angles and freehanded striping.

As ever, Salute was a great show. The South London Warlords organise such an awesome event, which is easily my favourite in the calendar. So many cool game demos going on, loads of traders selling interesting stuff, etc.

I did take a few pictures of things that caught my eye so I’ll do a followup post on those at some point.

Now, I wonder what I shall paint next?

Something for Euro Militaire perhaps…

Guess the Slow Grow burned me out painting-wise for a bit so I felt like a hobby break, and then Mass Effect 3 came along: the conclusion of my favourite game trilogy of all time.

So yeah, things got a bit neglected round here. Sorry about that.

Good news is, I finished the game (actually enjoyed the ending – flying in the face of public opinion) and am back on the brushes. And I’ve got plenty to talk about such as the tournament day of the WarmaHordes Slow Grow, the upcoming Salute show, and the work I’m doing on my entry to the painting competition.

So stay tuned.

So what do I do instead?

I paint an Incursion mini I’ve been wanting to paint for ages: Gretel Von X.

I’ve gone on about my love of the Weird War 2 genre on numerous occasions and in particular the Space Hulk inspired Incursion boardgame. Well Grindhouse have brought out a great line of miniatures to replace the cardstock pieces in the boardgame, which I simply had to have. And you’ll have seen my slow burn project to build 3D wall pieces for the game board (it is slowly progressing, promise).

So here’s Gretel, enhanced by Third Reich occult superscience by her father Doctor Hugo Von X. Apparently.

As you can see she’s wearing an interesting battle outfit. I’ll leave you to debate how appropriate corsetry and undergarments are for the battlefield. Still, the S&M dominatrix is a classic cliche of the genre so I’ll have to let her off (lest she sets about with that riding crop!).

Anyway. Enjoyed painting her. She’s pretty rough in places and I could have prepped her better to smooth out flash, etc. But she’ll do for the boardgame and I’d rather spend the time getting more Incursion models done.

I’m really pleased with the fact that I am able to get models finished in time and that it’s looking likely I’ll have a fully painted 50 point Warmachine force in a couple of weeks time. It will be a serious achievement for me, being the first time I’ve completed an army like this. Sure, I’ve been able to field fully painted Malifaux crews but they only weigh in at a handful of models each.

Anyway, to demonstrate progress here’s the latest addition which takes me to 35 points of Cygnar:

From left to right we have:

Captain Arlan Strangeways – Cygnar Solo
Hunter – Cygnar Light Warjack
Black 13th Gunmage Strike Team (Ryan, Lynch & Watts) – Cygnar Unit

Plenty I’d change or refine if I gave myself more time, but for gaming I’m super pleased with them and they sit nicely alongside the rest of my Cygnar battlegroup.

Slight shame that the Black 13th models are so short. For some reason the sculpts are at a slightly smaller scale – more like 28mm than 32mm. So they kind of look like children when stood next to other human sized figures!

One thing which has been a real time-saver for me is the use of the airbrush to lay down the first basecoat.

In this case I undercoated all models with GW Chaos Black spray, and then airbrushed the predominant colour. For Arlan and the Hunter I started with a deep green for the recesses, then went over with a mid blue and finally a light dusting with light blue from above.

I used a similar approach but with grey shades for the Black 13th.

For character minis I still think I prefer to brush paint over a white undercoat, but I may need to review that at some point. Certainly for bulk painting the spraying saves me at least a few hours I’d say.

My Cygnarans put in a dismal performance against Luke’s Retribution army and it turned out to be quite a demoralising rout.

I don’t like losing (who does?) but I really don’t mind as long as I get to do at least one cool thing in the game.

There was nothing cool about the fact I only managed to kill three of his infantrymen the entire game while he pretty much tabled me by turn three and had the option to kill the surrounded Kara Sloan, or metaphorically walk the ball across the line for a scenario victory.

Despair was compounded by the fact that I’m not sure what I did wrong.

The dice weren’t particularly against me and I don’t feel like the matchup was particularly one-sided. After the instructional game against Leon’s Menoth in Round 3 – in which I felt I learned a lot and gained confidence – this game has dumped me right back on my posterior, the referee’s count ringing in my ears.

I must quickly point out that Luke did play a very good game. He was well drilled, got the most of his synergies, picked his targets, and used terrain to his advantage. I should maybe stop trying to post mortem my own performance and consider what he did right.

Anyway. Another worrying thought is that we were trying to play at competition speed – trying to complete our respective turns within the proposed 12 minute tournament timeframe.

We pretty much both failed at that and we were only playing a 35pt game! It’s going to be 50 points in the real deal. Yikes.

Must say that I’m kinda dreading that one day event now.

So you can see I’m feeling pretty sorry for myself.

I guess I’ll need to pick myself back up and get in training. It would seem prudent for me to get as many practice games in as I can before the one day event.

Maybe I should go run in the snow and punch slabs of frozen meat, Eye of the Tiger playing on the iPod!

I popped down to Dark Sphere at the weekend, showed them my 2nd edition hardback (a lovely book, btw) and they just handed me a free A5 3rd edition rulebook. That’s right, anyone who can show they own a second edition rulebook gets a copy of the 3rd edition folio absolutely free.

Battlefront haven’t skimped on it either. It’s printed in full colour, nearly 300 pages long, and is chock full of artwork and nice illustrative examples.

I’ve heard reports that the binding can go after a bit of handling and people are recommending getting it spiral bound.

But still, can you imagine Games Workshop doing a giveaway scheme like this with the rumoured upcoming 40K sixth edition? Nope.

Kudos to Battlefront. You guys rock.

Well sort of.

Kara Sloan vs Severius isn’t in any of the stories I suppose, so instead we were proxying for a showdown in the Warmachine Wrath book between Menoth warcaster Thyra, Flame of Sorrow, and Cygnar’s Allister Caine. I was the aggressor in our scenario, though the scenario was pretty symmetrical – the winner being the first to destroy two monoliths on the opposing side of the table (or to assassinate the opposing warcaster)

I’ll cut to the chase: I lost the game. Which was fine, as the game was a whole lot of fun and I learned a heck of a lot. My opponent, Leon, was good enough to offer lots of helpful advice afterward which was really useful.

So instead of a turn by turn account of the battle, I’ll instead do a unit by unit rundown of how they performed, and importantly for me, what I did wrong with them!

Know Thine Enemy

First up though, here’s who I was facing on the battlefield:

Hierarch Severius (Epic Warcaster) – this old geezer hung back and did some channelling through his arc-noded light warjack. He also has a scary ability to take control of enemy models.

Revenger (Light Warjack) – this little jack was a key model as Severius was channelling spells through it. It was also surprisingly hardy for a little jack, I discovered.

Reckoner (Heavy Warjack) – he has a big gun which fires flaming rounds. Turned out not to be too scary, but did for Arlan – leaving just a pair of smoking boots where the Cygnar solo once stood.

Vanquisher (Heavy Warjack) – another jack with a flame attack, this time a nasty AoE attack which thankfully scattered when it was targeted on my models.

Errant Knights – a good all round unit with no clear weakness. Leon seemed to feel guilty for fielding them! They hit very hard on the charge as I discovered.

Choir of Menoth – a few of these chanting at the back made the Menoth Warjacks untargetable by most of my force. What a pain in the backside!

Vassals of Menoth – these Menoth solos were kept just behind the jacks to buff them. There was some great use later on of their Enliven ability which allowed the jacks to make an extra advance when attacked.

Gorman DiWulfe, Rogue Alchemist (Mercenary Solo) – a stalwart of the game, apparently. He didn’t do much beyond laying down smoke templates to keep models protected from my ranged attacks. But that was plenty.

Role of Dishonour

Here’s the list of shame. Well not really a list of shame as such, but how each of my models performed in the game and, most importantly, what I should have done differently.

Captain Kara Sloan – Kara did ok, actually. But then she’s the Warcaster so she should! A lot fell on her shoulders as the choir prevented any of my ‘jacks from targeting my opponent’s big guys. She fell eventually to an assassination salvo.

What I did wrong: I forgot about the Refuge spell on her so I could have ducked into cover to save her ass when she was being shot at. Oh and I made quite a balls up of the feat turn order of activation, which cost me a couple of free shots. Not that there was much to shoot at!

Defender – the Heavy Warjack had a torrid time in that all available targets were obscured behind smoke or untargetable enemy warjacks. Don’t think he even got a shot off except maybe to take down an errant knight out of desperation in Kara’s feat turn.
What I did wrong: I think the rapid advance to get into firing position was perhaps a mistake. Maybe I should have cautiously crept forward and allowed the Gun Mages and Black 13th to get into strategic/flanking positions

Cyclone – similar to the Defender in that my target choice was limited by that wretched choir. I think I’ve yet to roll more than 3 on 2d3 for its dual metal storm attacks! It did manage to take down a few Errant Knights though.

What I did wrong: again I maybe should have approached slower. Also I wasted three focus points on the Cyclone thinking I was going to boost all its attacks one turn, I think the feat prevented further boosting and the only targets I had were infantry so damage boosts were pretty pointless. Oops.

Hunter – again, no magical attacks meant the Hunter couldn’t use its armour piercing rounds on optimal targets. In the end it was kinda wasted taking pot shots at individual knights. And it then went and missed some! It took a shedload of damage from an Errant Knight charge and nearly went down but was able to make a nice parrying retreat back out of trouble, temporarily.
What I did wrong: erm, yeah, held back maybe til the choir was dealt with? Actually, thinking about it, the Hunter’s AP rounds could have been great against those ARM 20 objectives.

Arlan Strangeways – Arlan just hung back behind the Defender and power boosted it. He was actually something of a terror unit for my opponent as his voltaic gauntlet could have made a really nasty mess of his jacks with its dirupting attack, especially the Menoth reliance on the arc node.

What I did wrong: not a great deal, though I could have tried to keep him safer (my opponent went out of his way to snipe him) and then use the spray template of the gauntlet to good effect.

Black 13th Strike Mage Team – two of the three went down early to a Heavy Warjack attack. The last one managed to damage the Revenger arc-noded ‘jack, but not quite enough. It was too late before I realised how I was supposed to use them.

What I did wrong: Laughably I had them stood out in the open next to a patch of woods which would have provided them stealth. That would have kept them safe and I would then have probably gone after Gorman and the choir. They seem like a nice little toolbox unit to counter enemy effects

Arcane Tempest Gun Mages – I controversially sent them up on a flanking run to the left. Flanking is apparently hard to do in Warmachine but I had my reasons. Firstly, my first objective was to the left, and secondly I wanted to keep them separate from my main force as I knew they were the only unit Severius could take control of with his feat turn. They spent a couple of turns advancing and then barely scratched the objective with a barrage of magelock pistol fire.

What I did wrong: As one of my only magical weapon attacks I should probably have been using them on the choir-shielded targets. Also, I forgot to keep them in range for Kara’s feat turn to give them boosted attack rolls against the objective. I was trusting to roll an additional targeting dice to maximise my chance of critical brutal damage. Without it I should have done a single combined attack to overcome the ARM 20 (though was unlucky and didn’t get any double results to critical from my seven attack rolls)

Squire and Reinholdt – not much to say. They hung back, didn’t get in the way and did their thing, adding focus and granting additional attacks, respectively.

What I did wrong: Nothing! Amazing!

It’s actually a large part of my day job – data analysis that is. So I really couldn’t resist having a look at some data about the games we played down at the Cross Gaming Club throughout 2011.

Luckily the club has a forum challenge thread to arrange game bookings so I was able to go back through and collate booking data to use as a proxy. Now, the games booked may not necessarily those that actually got played. There were plenty of no-shows, rearrangements, or random pickup games, etc, but I reckon it should be a pretty good indicator.

Oh, and another quick disclaimer – I manually browsed through the threads so I can’t guarantee the accuracy of my data collection. Should be indicative though.

So, to start us off on our fascinating(!) data journey, let’s take a look at how many games were booked in.

Nothing too spectacular, but you can see we get around 50-60 games booked per month. This is across three sessions per week – Tuesday early, Tuesday late, and Thursday. March/April looks a bit odd but I think that’s a calendar quirk in that it was effectively a five week month (1st was a Tuesday and 31st was a Thursday).

You can see how early club closing affected December. We had to close the club as the pub wanted to rent out the space for more lucrative Christmas parties. Damn them.

It does dispel one myth for me though, that the club is “quiet” in the summer months. Seems like game bookings are not too seasonal with the exception of the aforementioned winter closure and a slight uptake in Spring.

So, which games did we play?

EDIT: Oops, I just noticed the chart title states 2012, when it was of course 2011

Warmachine/Hordes – by Privateer Press – is clearly the most popular tabletop miniatures game at the Cross, accounting for 38% of the 633 games booked in 2012. It’s also nice to see Malifaux and Infinity getting a look in. A few GW game systems were played, but there wasn’t such interest in 40K as in previous years.

In fact, if we look at how the games were booked each month by system (as a percentage of all games for the month) we can see some interesting trends.

You can see that 40K steadily declined as the year progressed. WarmaHordes gained in popularity and more and more people started to pick up Malifaux, and then Infinity. It’s particularly interesting to look at October-December and see how the Slow Grow League pulled Malifaux players back to Warmachine/Hordes (myself included). Infinity was unaffected by this and continued an upward trend as more and more players got into the superb sci-fi skirmish system.

Should I be so bold as to make some predictions for 2012?

Well, firstly, despite a recent claim that Malifaux is a “dead game”, I’d expect it to draw players back in after the Slow Grow League is done in a month or so. The third book models are steadily being released and players will want to try out the new stuff. I also see Infinity continuing to gain in popularity. There’s rumour of a new book with mission-based gameplay coming early this year so that could be a significant draw.

40K and Warhammer Fantasy Battle will probably languish in 2012 unless GW release anything significant. The recent Vampire Counts army book might just be the tonic WFB needs, and maybe a revised and fluffy Chaos Codex for 40K could encourage a resurgence.

There’s also a large amount of interest for an Ash Wastes post apocalyptic Necromunda campaign that will likely get a good number of players in.

Guess we’ll just have to look back in a years time how my predictions pan out.